Dragon Master

by Alan Carr

  “Yes,” I said, uncertainly. I wasn’t sure that stolen was the word I would use. “Did you take that parchment?”

  “No.” Boe’s voice was quiet, cold. I finally looked down and noticed that all excuse for color had drained from his face, turning it to stone. “I think we should go talk to Magnilda. There are some things you probably should hear. And she’ll probably want hear about this, too.”

  What in the Realm did that mean?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Secret Study

  Boe stuffed his mouth with potatoes from my plate before guiding me out of the mess. I didn’t think we should leave, but once he could speak again Boe insisted in a whisper that we couldn’t wait two more days for our next scheduled study hall.

  I pretended to feel faint so that people would see Boe leading me out and assume that we were visiting the apothecary, which would explain our absence at the rest of training. I wasn’t sure how I felt about doing that, but Boe really wasn’t giving me a choice in the matter. Plus I did feel like I needed some answers to all the questions that kept coming up. Like, what did Magnilda have to do with anything, and why would Boe know anything about our former study hall teacher? And where the heck was it we were going to find her?

  I found out the answer to that last question first, and then gradually more answers came, though also more questions.

  Boe led me into the empty front room of the study and through the stacks of books and a series of further rooms, deeper into the study than I’d gone the last time I’d been here. Everything had an eerie quality to it since no light streamed directly in through the east-facing windows. Once we were deeper than I thought even possible, we had to squeeze past a tall stack of books behind which there was an open trap door set into the floor. Its heavy oak frame was being held open by a thick rope tied at one end to a stanchion on the wall and at the other end to an iron handle bolted to the door. I didn’t get the impression that the door had been closed in a very long time. I could smell smoke rising from the dark within.

  Slowly and carefully, we descended.

  I expected a dungeon of some kind, or a crypt, or maybe a cave, or at least something dark and spooky. But as we passed through what seemed to be a narrow stone hallway, my eyes adjusted to the dark and I could see a spacious, homey room. A simple four-post chandelier hung above a wide clearing in the center of the room, its lit candles providing dim illumination. The walls were lined with fine mahogany book shelves, and there were two large matching desks to one side. Mismatched but comfortable looking chairs sat in front of them, likely appropriated from the royal chambers two floors above. A heavily bearded man lay asleep in one of the chairs, snoring softly. Through all the hair I recognized him as Magnilda’s husband, the one who had been lost and presumed killed in the forest years ago. In the chair beside him sat Magnilda. She set her book down and turned to face us, in no hurry, then smiled broadly when she saw Boe. When she registered that I was standing behind him, she let out a small exclamation of surprise and then shot up in her seat.

  “Welcome, welcome Caedan,” she said and gestured around the room, “welcome to the real study.” She winked at me and then disappeared through a doorway set into a far wall, returning with two small yellow birch chairs for Boe and me to sit in. We did, and she brought her own chair around so that we formed a triangle in the middle of the “real” study.

  “Caedan wrote down the Stonedragon Flame prophecy,” Boe began, “and then it was stolen and he was knocked out.”

  Magnilda furrowed her brow and looked at me and then at Boe. “Whatever are you talking about?”

  Boe looked to me for help.

  I tried to explain to her about the doodle, and writing the exercise, and then taking the walk. She stopped me when I told her that the parchment was gone and made me confirm that only the two pages I’d written on had been taken and that the desk was otherwise as I’d left it, then let me finish.

  “I just felt a kind of twisting in my stomach, and then I fell and hit my head.”

  “Dragon’s toxin,” Magnilda said quietly, almost to herself. She got out of her chair and walked toward one of the taller bookshelves. She pulled a step stool over so that she could reach a book near the top of the shelf, then asked me to continue.

  “That’s basically it,” I said, “when I woke up again it was weeks later and I was at home.”

  “Where’s home?” Magnilda asked.

  “Near Helmsbridge.”

  “So you just woke up in bed?”

  “I was in a chair. My mom was caring for me.”

  “And you felt tingly, slow?” I tried to remember. It had been something like that. I agreed, and then she looked at me puzzled. “Can you come get this book for me?” She gestured to a large volume that lay flat on top of the book shelf.

  I walked over and stood reaching up from atop the step ladder and could barely get my fingers on the edge of the book. I had to jump up slightly to get a grip on it, but my grip wasn’t firm and I just ended up causing the book to fall off the bookshelf. I reflexively protected my head and was able to catch the book by trapping it against the bookshelf with my arms. A shower of dust came down on me, and I had to close my eyes and cough to expel it from my lungs.

  Magnilda took the book from me and tossed it casually on the floor. “Very interesting,” she said. Then, to Boe, “You didn’t tell me about any of this when it happened.”

  Boe looked apologetic. “I didn’t really know the story, just that Caedan hurt himself.”

  Magnilda waved her hand, setting the issue aside. “So he hasn’t shown any signs of weakness since returning?”

  Boe looked at me and I answered for myself that I felt just fine, thank you, and what did she mean by dragon’s toxin?

  “Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I have dragons on the brain.”

  “You always have dragons on the brain,” Boe chuckled.

  “Well, when I spend all my time around a group of potential Masterborn, what else can you expect?”

  Boe had a familiarity with our former study hall teacher that I found to be a little unnerving and more than a little surprising. Magnilda had always been so straight and formal with us in class. I wondered if this new personality was her reaction to what happened to her husband. Except, what had happened to her husband? I looked over at him and Magnilda followed my gaze.

  “How much has Boe told you?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” Boe quickly answered. “I haven’t said anything to anyone. But when I found out that the prophecy went missing like that, well, I thought you needed to hear about it, and that you’d probably have questions I couldn’t answer.”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “And you must have questions for me as well,” Magnilda raised an eyebrow at me. I did.

  ***

  The story went like this: Five years ago, Sterling came to the Rægena Keep as a house water wizard after his apprenticeship in Leitha was cut short by the birth of the Cresence dragon. His master tried to stand up to the dragon, ignoring the wisdom that only a Stone Soul could become Dragon Master, but the ice lance spell he’d spent his life perfecting did not result in a kill. Left defenseless and weak by the spell, Sterling’s master was easily killed by the dragon. Sterling fled north and eventually found passage across the Great River and learned about the opening in Rægena. When he started his duties as house wizard, he spent many hours in the study and he and Magnilda fell quickly in love and were married. Together they discovered the underground room and made it their own private secret study, a place where they would not be bothered and could pursue their joint passion: Dragonlore. They both continued to carry out their duties, Sterling as water wizard, casting spells to purify water and warm baths and find the best places to dig new wells, Magnilda educating the Stone Souls; but their minds were occupied with the secrets they were uncovering—long forgotten truths and rumors that had the potential to change the
way Dragon Masters were trained or even the potential to find a way to end the Dragonbirths altogether.

  Though the study contained copies of almost every book known to have been written and copied, Sterling wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to find rare manuscripts and unfinished works, secret notes and the forbidden texts which had been purged from the keep. He began to spend all his time researching dark magics, assuring Magnilda that the more he learned about them, the more he was convinced that they were only forbidden because they could be used to potentially help overthrow the ruling classes and not because they contained any inherent evil or danger. She was wary, but also trusted her husband, and as his studies progressed he started coming to her with new Dragonlore that kept her more than busy enough that she didn’t have time to spend worrying. He uncovered a secret discipline called Spiritwalking. Using this magic, Sterling was able to send his soul out beyond the keep’s fortified borders, traveling at incredible speeds. He journeyed first as far as the Great River, then Stone Lake, and then to the far off volcanic islands of Peria.

  It took only two years for Sterling to become an adept Spiritwalker. He used his abilities to read pages from closed tomes on the far side of the Realm, then transcribed those pages onto parchment in their secret study. He used coded symbols and was able to hide his adventures from the other inhabitants of the keep, especially the other wizards who might recognize that he was using dark magic and would surely report him to the Rector. He did continue to tell Magnilda everything, or at least she imagined that he was telling her everything. She had the keys to his codes, and had access to everything he was writing. Still, they were drifting apart. Sterling became more obsessed with dark magics than Dragonlore, spent more time Spiritwalking than actually in the keep with his wife. He would lash out in anger whenever she tried to talk to him about his growing obsession, and this drove her to spend more time investigating the bits of Dragonlore that he would still occasionally find and write down.

  Two years ago, he told Magnilda that he’d reached another spirit. Not a Flamespirit or Stonespirit, not so far as he could tell, but likely another Spiritwalker. He told her that communication had been impossible, but that he thought that with time and a considerable effort, he expected that he would be able to break the communication barrier. After that, he projected for three full days, and Magnilda was left to tend to his body and worry over what was happening to him. When he finally returned to his body, he wrote out what she came to term the Stonedragon Flame prophecy, unencoded, and then fell into a deep sleep for another full day. After this, Sterling continued to spend his days and nights alternating between Spiritwalking and slumbering, but no longer wrote out any of his findings, nor did he speak to his wife about them.

  Magnilda devoted her time to trying to decipher the prophecy, even enlisting the help of her best student, Boe, when she decided she was stuck. Boe had ideas but couldn’t decipher the prophecy either. He suggested that perhaps it would spark a memory or otherwise mean something to someone else in the Stone Soul class, and so she’d assigned it as an innocuous writing exercise. I had shown great interest and Boe thought that together we would be able to finally make sense of the prophecy, but it hadn’t come to anything in the end.

  Then, one day, Sterling didn’t break out of his Spiritwalk. A week passed, and then a month. Magnilda reported that her husband had left the keep and gone missing, and when a search of the surrounding areas did not turn him up it was assumed that he was dead. When Magnilda stopped showing up to classes, the Rector seemed content to allow the Stone Souls to manage their own study hall time, assuming Magnilda needed time to grieve. That much, at least, was true. Magnilda continued to care for her husband’s inert, almost sleeping, soulless body, and continued to hold out hope that he would return to her. Boe continued to visit her during study hall and he became her sounding board, listening and learning and occasionally sharing theories or ideas about some new aspect of Dragonlore. Nobody else had been down to the secret study until Boe had brought me here, now.

  ***

  I sat in silence, dazed by the tale. How could any of this be true and we didn’t know anything about it? How did Boe never say anything to me about any of this?

  “So,” Magnilda said, “that’s my story. I think there are some details about your story that are still missing.”

  “I’m not hiding anything,” I stammered.

  She smiled at me warmly. “No, I don’t imagine you are. Though perhaps you know more than you realize.”

  Boe’s eyes widened.

  “When did you start to feel better, after you woke up?” Magnilda asked.

  “It didn’t take long at all, it was almost as soon as I woke up that I began to feel better. I think I just needed a moment for my muscles to wake up after I’d been asleep so long.”

  “So you just woke up and then after a minute you were able to walk around, talk to your parents, eat normally?”

  I thought back. “Well, my mom brought me some broth when I woke up and helped me drink it while my muscles woke up. It was bitter and stringy.”

  “Celeryroot!” Magnilda exclaimed, and the word echoed loudly through the underground hallway.

  I nodded, then added, “Yes, and also some other stuff.” I tried to remember. “She has a garden and she added some things from it. Gingercorn, I think. My father says she’s been studying Alchemy.”

  “Interesting that she thought to try the dragon’s toxin recovery potion. That isn’t something that would have occurred to the Royal Apothecary at a time like this. You’re very fortunate, Caedan. Another couple weeks and your body would have shut down permanently.”

  I shuddered. I had no idea that I’d been so close to death, or how grateful I should have felt for my parents’ intervention.

  “So it was definitely dragon’s toxin?” Boe asked.

  Magnilda nodded, and her eyebrows converged to form a V shape on her forehead. She looked at Boe. “The Dragonborn.”

  I was lost again in details I knew nothing about. I could tell they were both very concerned at this revelation, whatever it was. “Would you mind explaining it to me?” I asked.

  Magnilda said that Boe and I could come down and we would discuss it during our next study hall session, but that we shouldn’t talk about it at all outside this room, even quietly in our bunk. She had some reading and some thinking that she needed to do, and we shouldn’t be away from our training for too long or else people would come searching and might think to check the study. I understood then how much Magnilda was trusting me with, but then remembered that she’d trusted Boe with it first, and that he’d been hiding it from me for so long. I wasn’t happy about that part. But I agreed to the plan.

  I felt very tired. My head felt very full. I knew I’d need some time to process all my thoughts and figure out what all this dark magic and these secret underground meetings and this talk of Dragonborn and toxin meant to me.

  As it happened, I didn’t have time to figure out any of that stuff at all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Report

  The courier rode in a full gallop toward the keep and nearly fell off his horse when he saw Master Walker at the training grounds and quickly changed direction. Walker called a halt to our real-sword drills and we watched as the scrawny courier approached and dismounted, running the last few steps to the Dragon Master. He was young, possibly even younger than my Stone Soul class.

  “Master, sir, there is a dragon.” The courier’s body trembled from the exertion of his ride.

  “Nonsense,” Walker said, “we’re months from the Dragonbirth.”

  Some of the Stone Souls laughed out loud. Others chuckled nervously. Boe stood completely still, his jaw and fists clenched tightly.

  “He destroyed several homes in the swamplands. The Dragonsfire was still burning and I saw it myself, Master, uh, Master sir.” I instinctively looked to the north above the forest’s canopy for signs of smo
ke or a dragon circling overhead. The swamplands were several days journey through Scribe’s Notch, though, so it was not surprising that I didn’t see anything.

  “You saw buildings on fire?” Walker was incredulous that this courier interrupted his training session for this.

  “Yes, I saw the Dragonsfire, and I saw it, er, him, the dragon, sir.” Master Walker’s eyes narrowed and then he, too, looked to the north, seeing only the clear skies I’d seen. The courier followed this and added, quickly, “He was heading west, last I saw. I came straight here. You’re the nearest Dragon Master. You must ride!”

  Walker was not amused by this boy attempting to give him orders. “Get cleaned up,” he said to the courier, “we’ll have a proper audience tonight, at supper.” When the boy didn’t scamper off immediately, Walker learned forward to look the courier in the eyes. “And kindly get that filthy horse off my training grounds.”

  The courier’s knees buckled and he stumbled back to his mount, then led it toward the stables on foot while muttering to himself. I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  “We could investigate,” I heard Boe say. Master Walker snapped his attention to Boe and he quickly explained, “My dragon quest team can look into it, I mean. It’s probably a hoax. We’ll put a stop to it.”

  “You have training,” Walker dismissed him. “We all have training.” Master Walker was about to restart the drills, but I thought I saw what Boe was getting at. His home was west of the swamplands. Whether there really was somehow a dragon or this was just some kind sick joke, he’d want to be able to check in on his family. That sounded good to me.

  “We’re ready, sir,” I broke in. “We can put an end to this, whatever it is. We’ll find the truth and prevent people from panicking.”

  There was more nervous laughter from the other Stone Souls. I could see Walker considering letting us go, if only to stop the interruptions and get on with his drills. Plus, if he sent a dragon quest team now then the Rector would be less likely to send the Master himself to investigate after the audience with the courier tonight.